PART III

I The young Knight of Egerton was seated in his bath, therefore there was a fire in the room. It was nevertheless July, and his leman, a young girl whom he had purchased of her mother, a peasant’s widow of Derby, was oppressed by the heat. She had taken off her coif, her upper dress and skirt, and, her neck and arms bare and white, she was blowing the brands in the great stone fireplace. Her hair, which was usually confined by her coif, had fallen into disorder, and a strand hung down on her bare shoulders. This af…